Beneath The Surface

By Elizabeth Burgard Yesterday's Christmas toy soldiers stand ready on the shelves of junk shops paint half worn off the little boy wars played out years ago and these are the survivors the dumb stares at the half-remembering eyes that file by on a Saturday on a Saturday with the word ''war'' again in the newspapers Dan Cuddy | December 15, 1990

WHENwinter comeswill Warbe far behind?Fear is here,even as we lookto branches bare, dream themcovered in snow's peace; evenas we breathe the sharp, cold air,raise trembling vision to the Starof David, the Star of Bethlehem,the desert is there.Terrorwaits beneath the surface of allwe do; we see the Middle East becomethe new Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Holocaust;children erased, never to see theirprogeny, betrayed by munition pimps excused bygreed and the creed;an enemyof an enemy is a friend. Horror marcheswhen not displaced by Peace, then theworld powers refuse to practice preventionwhich could secure the end of all the curescalled War.

Jonathan Leshnoff has been the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra's composer-in-residence for two years, but his works have been featured every season since 2005. His trombone concerto will be performed in October, and he will have a CD coming out in February, featuring his violin concerto. "With an orchestra, you have an infinite amount of colors to play with," said Leshnoff. "It's like being a kid in a toy store. It's an infinite amount of fun and exhilaration." "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury I find it curious how this novel, written in the 1950s, speaks so directly to me today.

Jonathan Leshnoff has been the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra's composer-in-residence for two years, but his works have been featured every season since 2005. His trombone concerto will be performed in October, and he will have a CD coming out in February, featuring his violin concerto. "With an orchestra, you have an infinite amount of colors to play with," said Leshnoff. "It's like being a kid in a toy store. It's an infinite amount of fun and exhilaration." "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury I find it curious how this novel, written in the 1950s, speaks so directly to me today.

It was to be the first baseball game that I had photographed in several years, and I was looking forward to shooting the Kansas City Royals game until wind-driven rain swept in to dampen my spirits and much of the East Coast earlier this month. The game was rained out, so my baseball mission was suddenly replaced with a need to get what we call "weather art" - an all-inclusive term, covering the sunniest to the dreariest of days. The images can be most interesting in bad weather. But wind-blown rain has a way of getting onto the lenses and into the electronics of our cameras, and darker skies give us less latitude for exposure.

Beneath the Surface By Michael Phelps with Brian Cazeneuve. Sports Publishing LLC. 229 pages. $24.95. The as-told-to sports book can be a self-defeating enterprise. Whether written to explore the subtleties of a particular game (as in the new Buzz Bissinger-Tony LaRussa baseball collaboration, Three Nights in August), to give us an in-depth portrait of an athlete (cyclist Lance Armstrong's memoir) or even to make a fast buck (see Jose "Juiced" Canseco), it faces a fundamental quandary: Presenting the rich drama inherent in sports and life's struggles through the often less than thoughtful voice of a coach or athlete.

METROPOLITANRCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video$89.95.It is perhaps hard to imagine that a film that concerns itself mostly with the somewhat aimless wanderings of a group of New York upper-class kids during the Christmas party season could be extremely inventive and very entertaining, but "Metropolitan" is both.Writer/director Whit Stillman spent years writing the witty, literate script, raising the minuscule budget and getting crew and cast (all unknowns) together. It was worth the effort; "Metropolitan" is a gem.It is an examination of a class and of a lifestyle that is slowly sinking beneath the surface of the American Experience in the egalitarian '90s.

For her photographs of "Domestic Landscapes," opening at Loyola this evening, Penny Harris uses a homemade pinhole camera that, she says, allows a wide-angle field of vision. She concentrates on the family, and through her images, she writes in an artist's statement, "I want to look beneath the surface of this domestic landscape."The people in her pictures seem confined and uncertain of what goes on underneath the facades they assume. We don't know what's going on in their minds, as they don't know one another's thoughts, and we sense a certain tension in the atmosphere because of what's unspoken.

The evening of dances presented by New York choreographers and performers Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer at the Baltimore Museum of Art this weekend was a plodding and uneven adventure. Part of the difficulty was in the long inexplicable pauses between the dances; the other problem was with the weight of the works themselves.Ms. Packer and Mr. Bridgman are conceptual artists. Their dances are more attuned to the cerebral than to the physical. Their dancing is low-key and restrained, as if their bodies were constantly filtering and censoring their brain signals.

Baltimore County: Randallstown Pedestrian dies after he is hit by car A pedestrian died early yesterday after being hit by a car while crossing Liberty Road at Milford Mill Road, police said. The man was pronounced dead at the scene. Police declined to release the man's name pending notification of his family. Dundalk Police identify stabbing victim Police identified a man who was fatally stabbed Friday night in Dundalk as Gregory Joseph Takacs, 20. He was found in the 2900 block of Yorkway, where he lived, with a stab wound to the upper torso.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - As I was boarding my Emirates Air flight from Dubai to Pakistan the other day, I noticed a young Pakistani in front of me wearing a brown corduroy jacket, on the back of which was written in big white letters: "Titanic." Hmmm, I thought, that's not a good sign. I started to wonder: Is America the Titanic and Pakistan the iceberg we're about to hit, while we're searching for Osama bin Laden in the fog of Afghanistan? Or is Pakistan the Titanic, its president, Pervez Musharraf, the captain, America the only passengers and Afghanistan the iceberg we're about to hit?

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. -- The last spot on the Orioles' roster is being fought over like the last crumb tossed in the middle of a starving group of men. Maybe the fastest gets to it first. Or the strongest. Or the guy who's versatile enough to figure out more than one way to snatch it. The Orioles are in the process of choosing the characteristics that work best for them. They have plenty of options. Eventually, they'll need some answers. A 12-man pitching staff would leave manager Sam Perlozzo with four reserves on his bench.

IRVINE, Calif. --There is no doubt that success - and all the spoils that come with it - still motivates Michael Phelps. Success has earned him millions of dollars, let him travel to the far corners of the world, and made him famous beyond his wildest dreams. But failure, not success, is what truly inspires him. Phelps doesn't lose many races, yet when he does, the frustration and the anger are impossible to hide. His jaw tightens up, his eyes narrow and he mumbles quietly to himself.

Westminster senior Lyndsey Smith has accomplished big things. The problem is, few at her school know about them. "People look at me and ask, `You swim?' But I am used to it by now," said Smith, who has been swimming since she was 8. "In Carroll County, there are no swim teams [in high school], so it's kind of frustrating when you see your friends being able to compete for your school. I'm an athlete, but I don't have that opportunity." Next year, she will get that chance at Penn State.

Baltimore County: Randallstown Pedestrian dies after he is hit by car A pedestrian died early yesterday after being hit by a car while crossing Liberty Road at Milford Mill Road, police said. The man was pronounced dead at the scene. Police declined to release the man's name pending notification of his family. Dundalk Police identify stabbing victim Police identified a man who was fatally stabbed Friday night in Dundalk as Gregory Joseph Takacs, 20. He was found in the 2900 block of Yorkway, where he lived, with a stab wound to the upper torso.

WASHINGTON - As a political commentator, Kanye West makes a great rap artist. During a TV fundraiser last week for Hurricane Katrina victims, the hip-hop star departed from his prepared script to blurt out, among other nuggets, "George Bush doesn't care about black people." I winced. Mr. West's anti-Bush remarks were not only inappropriate (one hopes that the donations from Bush supporters are just as welcome as everyone else's) but shortsighted. The sluggish official response to Katrina left more than black folks in its destructive wake.

NEW YORK - Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds marks a turning point in pop culture. America's top commercial moviemaker has sensed that the atrocities of 9/11 and the turmoil of its aftermath must be used as reference points even for escapist movies, no matter how great the risk of exploitation. Based on H.G. Wells' 1898 novel about Martians crushing everything in their path as they traverse the Earth in three-legged, multi-tentacled war machines called Tripods, the movie is at its best when it revamps the basic elements of Wells' primal space-invasion plot.

It was to be the first baseball game that I had photographed in several years, and I was looking forward to shooting the Kansas City Royals game until wind-driven rain swept in to dampen my spirits and much of the East Coast earlier this month. The game was rained out, so my baseball mission was suddenly replaced with a need to get what we call "weather art" - an all-inclusive term, covering the sunniest to the dreariest of days. The images can be most interesting in bad weather. But wind-blown rain has a way of getting onto the lenses and into the electronics of our cameras, and darker skies give us less latitude for exposure.

Larry Fishburne is a star who's been waiting to happen for a long time. I think he's happening now.After a series of stunning peripheral performances -- he was Furious Styles in John Singleton's "Boyz 'N the Hood," to name just one -- Fishburne has moved to the center of an excellent movie. And the part has just as much pizazz as Eddie Murphy's star-making turn in "48 HRS."In "Deep Cover," Fishburne plays a Cincinnati cop named Russell Stevens, who's recruited by a Drug Enforcement Agency official, transferred to Los Angeles, and given orders to penetrate a drug cartel run by Colombians.

Beneath the Surface By Michael Phelps with Brian Cazeneuve. Sports Publishing LLC. 229 pages. $24.95. The as-told-to sports book can be a self-defeating enterprise. Whether written to explore the subtleties of a particular game (as in the new Buzz Bissinger-Tony LaRussa baseball collaboration, Three Nights in August), to give us an in-depth portrait of an athlete (cyclist Lance Armstrong's memoir) or even to make a fast buck (see Jose "Juiced" Canseco), it faces a fundamental quandary: Presenting the rich drama inherent in sports and life's struggles through the often less than thoughtful voice of a coach or athlete.

RESTORERS in Florence have just completed a cosmetic job on Michelangelo's "David," with the usual amount of self-congratulatory rhetoric about the rediscovery of its "original" glory. Of course, that is impossible to achieve because of normal aging, hundreds of years of weathering and damage, and even harsh cleanings in the past. And while the Florentine officials were patting themselves on the back, they were ignoring the statue's real problems: potential instability because of weaknesses in the stone and a questionable base.